Dentist Offices: Playing the Waiting Game

“The waiting, is the hardest part…”

-Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

You don’t need to appreciate classic rock to agree that waiting rooms take their toll on more than just time. We’ve all been there, the rows of padded chairs with wooden armrests, the piles of magazines, the TV, and the plant in the corner that may or may not be plastic. It’s these elements, and more, that make up the traditionally dull waiting room experience we know so well.

But does it have to be dull?

Sure enough, plenty of businesses and offices work hard figuring out how to make a waiting room more inviting, and put forth a lot of effort into improving their lobbies for their clients. But no matter where you go, whenever you end up having to wait for more than a few minutes you’ll likely see a TV.

And there’s a reason for that. TVs are an effective distraction. TVs draw people’s attention, and they’re a familiar element that we’re used to looking at on a daily basis – providing a quiet atmosphere with the comfort and white noise of what’s on. While televisions are great in that respect, there are many reasons that cable and satellite TV are not the best options for your office.

When you’re waiting to be seen by someone, you aren’t necessarily invested in a long program when you’re expecting to miss some, or most of it, as soon as you’re called away. And in the case of having the TV turned to any one station or giving visitors control over the remote, with a waiting room full of people it’s impossible to cater to them all and it’s likely that someone is going to get alienated.

So what’s a business owner to do about that?

It’s Relevant TV for Dentists and It’s Relevant TV for Medical Offices work to address those issues and more. Each custom TV network airs original content pulled from a vast library of categories tailored specifically for the practice it’s in. The segments run for two and a half minutes on average – meaning they’re brief enough to cater to an audience with limited focus, and the categories are varied enough that everyone is bound to see something that interests them on some level.

IRTV compliments an atmosphere in which people are looking for a distraction and aren’t there to be entertained. Going beyond aired content, the service can also be used to reach out to those people in waiting. Posts, photos, and even videos from your social media can be uploaded and played for visitors to see.

Whether you’re introducing your staff, highlighting local events, or even showcasing other services your business provides; it’s worth taking a look at: It’s Relevant TV.

Dental Education Through TV: Brushing Up on Hygiene

“Brush your teeth twice a day, for two minutes. Once in the morning, and again before bedtime. And don’t forget to floss…”

– Every Dentist & Mother

The words every kid grows up hearing a thousand times. The very same words people often seem to forget despite the constant reminders. How is it that kids, and even some adults, throw oral hygiene out the window and neglect this most basic routine?

It all comes down to delivery. Good oral hygiene starts at home, and extends to the dentist’s office. From parents passing on good habits to their kids to dentists educating them on proper dental care. But how do you do it? How do you get the message across and stress the importance of taking care of your teeth? Aside from the words we all know, dentists use a number of aids to educate patients.

Post-visit, your dentist might sit with you one-on-one and go over the proper ways to brush your teeth. They might ask what kind of toothbrush, or brand of toothpaste you’re using, if you’re flossing, etc; maybe they even pull out that big pair of plastic teeth. Some dentists even hand out brochures on dental care or have them available in the lobby for all to see. And in this age of technology, you might even find blogs written by the dentists you visit.

But how effective is that in the long run?
Are patients seeing your content?

Reaching the patients is the key

Without being able to reach patients effectively you can’t pass on whatever it is you’re trying to say. It’s Relevant TV provides a unique and alternative solution to this problem…

Offices, waiting rooms, and even operatories, are often equipped with a television. Dentists’ TVs are usually tuned into something like the news, weather, or a talk show for white noise or casual comfort. In short, a custom Dental TV can run those same kinds of programs for less than it costs to run basic cable – and do more for your practice at the same time. With It’s Relevant, you can not only air those key channels, you can run original content you yourself produced and show it to the world.

Have a video introducing your doctors, or staff? A lovely office tour of the practice featured on your website? You could have that aired on your waiting room’s television – as well as any promotions or events you want to share with your patients. Connect with them, and present a more welcoming experience through a dental television network.

So going back to oral hygiene and getting the message across, how is TV a better platform for this? The answer is pretty straightforward, people watch TV. They watch it, and they pay attention to it – sometimes moreso than face to face.

TV has a lasting impact

Speaking from my own personal experiences, I recall a time years ago when I was young and my mother was bringing me to a new dentist. And in her motherly attempt to relieve me of anxiety, she casually mentioned that the dentist I was going to see “Has a TV in his office, so you can watch it during the visit.”

The comfort and distraction that the TV provided turned an otherwise dreadful experience into something less so, which is precisely why it was there in the first place, and are often found in waiting rooms and operatories today.

As a kid, or even an adult, that period of time in which you are at the dentist, you are always looking for something to take your mind off of what’s going on. The patient is invested, and focused – and can be entertained and informed with the programs you choose to put on the TV.

If you’d like to create a better environment for your patients, and connect with them more, it can be as simple as changing the channel on your TV. Schedule a free consultation with one of our TV experts to help reach your goals. You can call 203-588-0994 or email: sales{at}itsrelevant.com to set up a conversation.

Utilizing Television to Benefit Your Business

Your Customers Didn’t Come to Watch TV

If you print a sign to promote a new service, and then you never hang it in the business, you’re missing an opportunity, right? That seems pretty clear, and yet business owners think nothing of buying a TV and filling it with useless programming. But how is that helping your business and customers?

Reality Check

There is an important reality about including a TV in your business location: your business is not the customer’s living room. They have a TV in their own living room and they have complete control over that one. Having a TV in your business with the remote freely available is not going to draw anyone off their own couch to come sit in your waiting room.

You may have a television in the waiting area of your doctors office or automotive service center. And you might leave the remote out for your customers to pick what they want to watch, but why? Did a customer ever say “I feel like watching the Steelers game, so I’m going to the doctor’s office”? Of course not!

Additionally, leaving the channel selection to your customers poses some risks. What will they choose to watch? Will they be annoyed by the preferences of the other customers? Some business owners who hold the remote at the desk or behind the counter complain that dealing with changing the channel wastes time and frustrates employees also.

Customization is your Right and Duty

The truth is that you designed your business location with purpose. The paint color, the flooring, the lighting, the furniture: you selected these to create a certain feeling in your space. Until now there were very limited options to customize your TV with that same care, but now you can.

Your TV can influence your customers to spend more money, come back more often, and follow your business on social media. Choosing the right programming is all you need to do to make your TV worth something. With It’s Relevant TV, your TV is an asset that helps drive greater sales.

Magnetic Television

Whatever channel you have on, your customers will look at the television at least once – it’s human nature. But how can you keep them looking without giving them the remote? Keep changing the type of content every few minutes automatically!

If you have national news, sports, travel, gardening, food/cooking, fashion, kids programming and more available to mix at all times, you’ll have something for everyone. It’s Relevant TV is the subscription service that provides you this flexibility. The system automatically mixes content from categories you choose so your customers are never bored or frustrated with what’s on the TV.

And While You Have Their Attention

When your customers are looking at something, you put your brand on it, right? Custom water bottles, notepads, refrigerator magnets, this is a pretty common practice. With your TV, you have the opportunity to do so much more! Put your logo on the screen, add your own informational videos, and add your own marketing messages and specials as images next to the broadcast. Show off your social media posts to gain followers. All of that would be impossible with cable TV.

It sounds like a promotional dream, but it’s very easy to achieve with It’s Relevant TV. Get your customers to look, keep them watching, and harness their attention to grow your business.

Top 10 Reasons to Cancel Cable TV or Satellite TV in Your Business

Are You Using Cable or Satellite TV in your Business?

Cable TV and Satellite TV costs are on the rise, while they continue to offer little benefit for your business. Business owners are finding a better way to utilize their TVs, to not only entertain their customers, but to make the business more money at the same time. Why only spend money on cable/satellite when you can be making money with It’s Relevant TV?

The Top 10 Reasons to Switch (Video)

1. Cable TV COSTS Money, It’s Relevant TV MAKES you money.

It’s Relevant TV is designed to make your business money by integrating your own promotions, videos and social media into the programming. These integrations lead to an increase in the average customer spend, social media followership and return visits/referrals. Traditional TV doesn’t give you any customization, while IRTV lets you customize every part of what’s being delivered to your customers.

2. Competitive Ad Block®

Cable and Satellite TV have a ton of commercials, often 16-22 minutes an hour. And while everyone expects to see commercials on TV, the one thing you as a business owner shouldn’t tolerate is a competitor to advertising in your location.

If you own a Mercedes-Benz Dealership, would you want a BMW commercial being played to your customers? Of course not. That’s why It’s Relevant has Competitive Ad Block®. It comes with all IRTV systems, and automatically blocks out ads from your industry competitors.

3. No Repetitive Loop & Better Content

If your TV is tuned to a news network you’re likely showing the same content over and over on repeat all day long. A repetitive loop just makes customers feel like they are waiting longer, and no one wants that! It’s Relevant TV is different. The programs never loop! Instead, we bring in fresh content all day long and switch between different content types to keep things interesting.

TV has a lot of channels, and you may find your staff and visitors having to change between them during the day. It’s Relevant TV has just as many choices, but instead of picking one channel, you choose all of the categories of content your visitors will enjoy most. We change the channel for you throughout the day, switching up the programming types every few minutes, increasing the number of touch-points you have with your customers.

4. Display Your Own Ads

Short of buying expensive advertising spots, Cable and Satellite offer no way to get your ads and messages across to customers. It’s Relevant TV makes it easy to feature your messaging next to the programming. You can create and upload images right from your computer or smartphone. IRTV handles the rest, rotating through your ads constantly throughout the day.

You can even set specific days or hours of the day to show specific ads. So for instance, if you run a restaurant, you can have breakfast specials shown until 11am, lunch until 3pm, and dinner for the rest of the night.

5. National News & 5-Day Weather Forecasts

Cable and Satellite TV offer a variety of weather and news channels. But you have to be tuned to one of the channels to get the information. As we all know, any extended viewing of news or weather leads to viewer boredom.

It’s Relevant TV allows you to mix in news and weather information seamlessly throughout the day amidst other more entertaining programming. So you can have food shows, travel programs, celebrity interviews, and news/weather all together instead of being stuck on a single repetitive channel for hours.

6. Real-Time Social Media Display (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)

Is your business on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter? How do you encourage people to follow your accounts? Are you getting real customers to follow you?

It’s Relevant TV will display your posts in real-time, showing your most recent photo and text updates to your customers. This is great because it encourages people that have been to your location to follow you. People that have physically been there are more likely to return when following you than someone that’s never been to your location before.

7. Display Your Own Videos

Cable and Satellite TV offer no way for you to display your own videos. You’re just stuck with the channels they provide. It’s Relevant TV is different. If you have a TV commercial or two, you can run them on your TVs. If you have a video message from a staff member for your customers, you can have it displayed for them. It’s as easy as uploading a video from your computer, or recording one on your phone. It’s Relevant TV takes care of rotating your messages evenly throughout the day, and even adds subtitles to your video productions so that they can be displayed on the TV without sound if you desire.

8. Sell/Barter Your Ad Space

Are there businesses in your area that might want to advertise to your customers? It’s Relevant TV provides you with a platform to display the ads and make direct revenue from them.

Let’s say you run an office, and across the street there is a restaurant. As people wait in your office they could see an ad for a special deal at the restaurant. You could charge the restaurant $50 or $100 a month to display their image ad on your TV, however much you choose – you set the price. And you keep all of the revenue.

9. All Family-Friendly Content

Unlike Cable and Satellite TV, It’s Relevant TV only provides content that is prescreened and family friendly. It’s far too often that cable channels have a tame piece of programming one minute and something disgusting, offensive or inappropriate the next. It’s Relevant TV gives you as a business owner piece of mind.

10. Easy Installation

Cable and Satellite TV require long installations, large windows of time for an installer to come, complex wiring, drilling holes and a lot of headaches.

It’s Relevant TV comes as an easy self-install kit. It takes just 5 minutes to get going, and you can do it on your time, when it’s convenient for you. No holes to drill, no shady installers to have to deal with- Just the TV programming your business needs on your terms.

Consult with a TV Expert

It’s Relevant TV offers a free consultation with business owners. You can reach TV specialists by emailing retail {at} itsrelevant.com or by calling (855) ITS-RELE between 8:30AM and 6:00PM EST, Monday-Friday.

Social Media on TV: Businesses Become More Social with their Customers

Businesses Need to Have A Presence on Social Media

The vast majority of consumers are on at least one, if not multiple, social media networks. For this reason, it is obvious that your business should be there as well. Every B2C business owner, no matter their industry, size, or location, has to think about using social media to reach their customers. But, using social media for your business is different than using social media for yourself. Business owners need to strategize how to best reach the people that are the most likely to utilize the business.

Social Media Followership Starts in Your Location

For a long time, businesses have focused on getting more people to “follow” or “like” accounts on social media. They target people on their computers and phones to get a “like”. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all have ad platforms designed with that goal in mind. The problem that we’ve heard from our clients who have tried these ad platforms is in conversion (making those new followers into customers). In fact, the vast majority of the new followers you gain online never turn into actual customers.

We’ve found that getting existing customers to follow you is a much better goal. These people are more likely to purchase from you in the future, and to tell their friends about your business. Plus, they have already found you! They know how to get to your business, and they have enjoyed being there in the past.

Gaining Real Followers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

But how can you get your customers to follow you from your physical location? Up until now social networks like Facebook have been promoted with physical signs and stickers. While it lets people know you have an account, it doesn’t give them a real reason to follow you. What will “liking” your business do for them? What kind of posts will they be seeing? A static sign just doesn’t show it.

facebook-sticker — Static Facebook sticker in a store window

It’s Relevant TV has the answer. Built into the TV service is an automated display of your most recent posts. Having all of our most recent real posts leads to more customers following your social media profiles. The service syndicates your posts from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to your televisions, in between TV programs. This lets customers not only see that you have social media profiles, but also gives them a “free sample” of what they can expect to see when they follow you. It’s a gentle way to prove to them value in following you.

Get a Demonstration

It’s Relevant TV offers live online demonstrations of the social media TV system. For more information, and to book a consultation please visit: www.itsrelevant.com

Feeling Loopy? Repetitive Slideshows Leave Customers More Anxious

What is it about an environment that makes you feel bored? What makes you feel like time is moving slowly, or that you have been waiting a long time? It probably wouldn’t surprise you to hear that many people cite repetitive (or looping) television programs to be a major factor.

Repetition can be seen everywhere

Repeating over and over

Have you ever been at a medical office and seen the same “medical facts” flash on the screen a number of times before seeing your doctor?

How about the gas station where the screen plays the same advertisement or weather forecast multiple times in 3 minutes?

Have you ever been at a restaurant and seen the same news stories played every 15 minutes?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you are not alone! Businesses often turn to television content providers with limited libraries of content to show “relevant” content to their customers. Unfortunately, most of these providers don’t take into consideration the amount of time customers wait, or the average frequency of visits the same customer makes in any given week or month.

Showing the same content over and over is boring

Bored Man When people are bored they feel like their time is being wasted. Business owners don’t want to waste customers’ time. Happy customers make greater purchases and come back again in the future.

The It’s Relevant TV custom TV platform takes all of this into consideration.

The 5 Main Differentiators of It’s Relevant TV

1. There is no loop. The programs shown on the custom TV networks do not repeat over and over again in the same sequence.

2. The content library is gigantic. It’s Relevant TV licenses television programs from top TV producers and short-film makers around the world. As a result, the company constantly changes the content they deliver to each of the partner televisions.

3. It’s Relevant TV constantly updates the content. Some other services “refresh” the content on custom networks once or twice a month. It’s Relevant TV releases new content to partners almost hourly, expanding the library and creating new experiences all the time.

4. It’s Relevant TV makes custom TV easy to control. Some other solutions require that the business owners have to go in and select specific videos that they want played, and then have to go back and change their selections anytime they want the programming on their TV to change. It’s Relevant TV changes the programming for you, while keeping within your preferences and parameters. Instead of picking specific videos, you simply choose from a list of 50 categories of content. The service then continues to deliver videos in only the categories you select.

5. They take care of the licensing. This is a big deal, and will become an even bigger deal in the years to come. Some services allow business owners to display YouTube videos on their TVs. Simply put: THAT IS ILLEGAL. YouTube’s terms of use prohibit broadcasting content publicly. Users who upload videos to YouTube give YouTube limited rights to display their content only on certain monetized online platforms. Since taking the content off the platform is essentially stealing it, the owner of the content could come after your business if you use it that way.

For more information and to explore creating your own non-looping custom channel contact It’s Relevant TV via phone at: 855-ITS-RELE or via email at: support@itsrelevant.com

An Apple TV App for Businesses (tvOS)

Transforming the TV in Your Business

Up until now there have been very few options for using a TV in a business location. Turning on cable TV results in a lot of doom and gloom news stories and unpredictable content. Even worse for your business, cable TV delivers countless competitive ads that draw customers away. Some businesses have tried using their televisions as digital signs. But plain old digital signage is BORING and often ignored. Some pre-programmed video packages are available also, but those bring a repetitive loop that can frustrate customers. Finally, there is a solution! It’s Relevant TV takes a fresh approach to help you take control of your TV.

For a business, the true power of television is the combination of interesting content and well-placed advertisements, and It’s Relevant TV puts that power within reach of every business owner. From local retailers, medical offices, restaurants, and salons to sports arenas, theaters, hotels and car dealerships, the custom channels work uniquely for each and every location.

Apple TV App (tvOS) Hand Remote — It’s Relevant for Apple TV (tvOS)

Apple TV (4th Generation)

It’s Relevant TV for tvOS brings the power of the company’s custom TV networks to any owner of a 4th generation Apple TV device. The service combines the best aspects of television, social media and digital promotions. In addition, the service allows business owners to control them all from their computer, tablet, or smartphone. It offers greater control than any other TV product available today.

Television Content, Social Media, Competitive Ad Block®

Businesses choose the types of content they want to display to their visitors from a vast library of licensed content. They can also upload their own messaging, images, and videos to show. In addition, they can decide which social media updates to display from their own accounts, and It’s Relevant TV does the rest. It’s Relevant TV automatically delivers fresh video content throughout the day, updating the promotions and social media as each business makes changes in their account. Businesses are also excited about what It’s Relevant TV blocks from the broadcast: competitive ads. With Competitive Ad Block® from It’s Relevant TV, all advertisements from competing businesses are blocked from reaching the screen.

Get Started

All you need is the free application from the iTunes TVOS store, and an access code from It’s Relevant TV. Search “it’s relevant tv” on your Apple TV) to download the app. If you don’t already have an access code please email support@itsrelevant.com to get one.

Today is the day you will make your TV worth something. We look forward to providing you with the tools to make it happen.